And The Hits Just Keep On Coming

The was a lot of speculation that with Yang’s departure from Yahoo, we would see a stock price increase and the weather-beaten company could move on.  And that is exactly what happened until Steve Ballmer took them out at the knees.

Here’s the timeline.  November 17, the announcement is made that Jerry Yang will be stepping down as CEO of Yahoo.  The aqnnouncement came late in the day.  The stock closed at $10.63.  November 18,  the stock opens at $11.83, an 11.2% increase.  The stock sored to a high of $12.40 before closing at $11.55.  November 19.  The stock opens at $11.37.  Steve Ballmer makes annoucement that Microsoft is no longer interested in buying Yahoo.  The stock dips to $9.36.

How far will the stock fall?  Who knows.  But if it hits $5, I am going all in. (Maybe)

Twitter - More Versatile Than Shrimp

Remember the scenes from Forrest Gump where Bubba Explains all the ways to cook shrimp?  Now replace shrimp with Twitter.  Sure, maybe you can’t BBQ it, but look at all the things you can do.  There are now over a hundred services based on Twitter.

And now there’s another one.  Tweetag is a new Twitter search application.  Remember Summize?  Yeah Twitter bought them for a cool half million.  Tweetag allows you to search for certain keywords but along with those results it delivers a list or related tags or keywords.

Sounds great.  No really.  I meant it.

Just When You Thought You Were Safe, You Might Get Rick Rolled By Phone

It has probably happened to all of us.  You click on a video link to see a cat playing the piano (or something important like that) and bam!, theres Rick Astley and he is “never gonna give you up”.  The Rick Roll has become a popular April Fool’s prank.  Even YouTube did it.  But now, the Rick Roll has escaped its internet prison.

Twilio has launched a service that will “let your web app make and receive phone calls”.  How did they get some free media coverage for their new service?  They Rick Rolled Mike Arrington of TechCrunch.  You can see how he felt about it here.

It tried the service on myself.  Poorly executed.  In the classic Rick Roll, there is no warning.  Just Rick Astley suddenly singing.  If you decide to Rick Roll someone using Twilio, the first thing they hear is, “You have been Rick Rolled by ###-###-####”.  Technically speaking, that’s not a Rick Roll, but maybe I am splitting hairs.

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If You Wanted An OpenMac, It Might Be Now Or Never

Psystar, which began selling the OpenMac, a Mac clone, back in April, has had it’s counterclaims dismissed in US District Court.  The counterclaims filed alledged that Apple’s EULA violated the Sherman Anitrust Act.  This was in response to Apple’s lawsuit against Psystar alleging that Psystar violated Apple’s EULA and therefore violated its licenses, trademarks ande copyright.  Psystar’s counterclaims were dismissed basically because Judge Willaim Alsup does not believe that the Mac OS does not constitutes a market on it’s own.

What does this mean for the rest of us?  It reinforces that software makers can tie there software to certain hardware and that if you want to run the Mac OS, your gonna have to talk to Steve.  Or does it?  I see reports all the time of people putting the Mac OS on non-Apple computers all the time.  Apple is not going after them because they are not trying to sell them.  Maybe Psystar should have just built the computer and sold it without an OS.  They could *hint* to the fact that the Mac OS could possibly be installed on it.

Either way, my guess is that Apple will request an injuction against Psystar pretty soon so that it will have to shut it’s doors before the holidays.  Better get them while they are hot.

Just In Time For The Holidays, A Little Help For Your Turkey

Cookstr has just opened their doors in open beta.  Yes, it is another recipe site.  But the interface is clean and uncluttered and the list of professional foodies that have contributed to thesite is what caused me to sit up and take notice.  I spent over 16 years in the food service industry serving everything from hot dogs to chateaubriand.  I am rarely impressed by recipe sites especially those who have un-tested, user submissions (people sometimes leave very useful information out of their recipes ie. certain ingredients).This is not to say that the site doesn’t have user-generated content.  It does.  But it also has submissions from professionals.

This site boasts recipes from Julia Childs, Mario Batali, Alice Waters and a whole host of other chefs and celebrated foodies.  On the front page, there is a link to Thanksgiving recipes.  Searches for recipes can be narrowed down by cost, skill level and total time.  You can further refine your search by filtering items on the number ingredients, a one pot only meal or if it is kid friendly.  A quick search for “turkey” gave me several recipes for cooking whole turkeys and several recipes for using the leftovers.  All of this may influence you to buy a bigger turkey this year.

An iPhone Loaded With Ads - Just What I Wanted For Christmas

Videoegg has extended its ad network to the iPhone.  What does this mean for the end-user?  Even more ads being served up by those “free” apps that you downloaded.  Everyone knows that mobile advertising is supposed to be the next big thing.  As wireless speeds increase, the ability to surf the net on mobile devices will increase (along with the user experience).  But do you really want ads all over you mobile device now?  AT&T still can’t seemed to deliver it’s promised speeds on the 3G network.  Do we really wants ads clogging it up even more?  Not me.  I hope that the developers that are building iPhone apps, release two versions of each one.  A free one, that is ad suported and a paid one with no ads.  I will gladly pay $.99 to keep what little bandwidth I have.